


Doubt

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Post-Reichenbach, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 20:30:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scene from the Holmes brothers first post-Reichenbach Christmas together. They have a little talk. As much as any talk between them could be little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doubt

“Do you think I don’t know why you decided that the world had to see _John_ grieving for you to really believe you were dead?”  
  
Sherlock is taken aback by the question. He has a fleeting suspicion that he might know the answer, but he just didn’t expect Mycroft to ask. His brother must be in a really odd mood if he’s chosen to talk about this sort of—about feelings. Sherlock is sorely tempted to point out that Mycroft is spoiling the festive spirit, but it looks like his sarcastic streak doesn’t stretch quite that far.  
  
Courtesy of Scotland’s climate the snow is glittering outside, no doubt—Sherlock didn’t stop to pay attention when he arrived, and now the curtains are thickly drawn so he can’t see. (Mycroft is being overly paranoid. _Who_ exactly would be lurking outside, here of all places?) But yes, white Christmas, check. The room is lit molten with the festive lights, mesmerising shadows dancing all the way up to the high, ornate ceiling. Check. Impressive flames in the enormous fireplace making it seem as if it’s preening. Check. Sherlock is sure somewhere in the mansion there is festive food being cooked and possibly wine being mulled—his brother can be dreadfully ostentatious that way, especially when there’s an opportunity to do it in Sherlock’s face.  
  
The checklist is pretty well covered, but the spirit is still severely lacking in festivity.  
  
He suppresses a shiver at the thought that there might be some seasonal music to be endured over the next couple of days, but a slanted look at Mycroft’s serious, thinning face—God, isn’t that an uncomfortable sight?—reassures Sherlock he’ll be spared such trials after all. He really doesn’t feel much like celebrating. He feels like sinking into a hot bath and letting himself drop to the bottom of the tub. A bottom that in his vague, semi-conscious fantasy is a mile deep.  
  
Sherlock stretches further on the sofa, wrapping himself deeper in his coat in the process. He doesn’t answer Mycroft’s question; he just eyes him silently from the gap between his fringe and his coat’s collar. Mycroft sighs.  
  
“Will you take your shoes off?” he asks emphatically.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t even blink for five long seconds, then, with a roll of his eyes and with as little strain as possible he toes off his shoes. The thudding noise of their drop on the floor is a sudden reminder of the house where they both grew up. There were hollow spaces under some particular floor boards. Sherlock had counted five of them before Mycroft made three secret hideouts in Sherlock’s bedroom, then let him have at it. Cavities under floorboards were forgotten for a while and when Sherlock did remember them he found them all empty.  
  
“You know,” he murmurs, “I still don’t know where the third hideout was. You always were so inscrutable.”  
  
“That was a problem only because you resorted to figuring it out by observing _me_. There was perfectly good evidence for you to make a deduction.”  
  
“I was eight.”  
  
“That is why you were forgiven for relying on reading people to help you solve a puzzle.”  
  
Sherlock opens his mouth, hesitating. From his ridiculously posh armchair Mycroft looks at him down his nose. His voice is slightly bored. “Yes, yes. Take your pick from all the jokes involving my not being human. You haven’t answered my question.”  
  
“It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. And I have.”  
  
It’ll never cease to give Sherlock a jolt of pleasure watching Mycroft having to actually pause and _think_ , because Sherlock made him. At the moment, with so few good things in his life, Sherlock would even be prepared to admit his gratitude.  
  
“Ah,” Mycroft says at last.  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
They remain immobile and quiet at their respective places. The awkwardness, crisp and yet well-worn, brings further comfort to Sherlock. It feels like his old life to him, feels like security. He used to avoid this particular kind of awkwardness, regardless of how rare it was in the first place. And it _was_ rare for them to speak openly about their relationship. But now it feels like a cool hand on his brow, counteracting the heat of the fireplace not ten feet away from the sofa.  
  
“You can take your coat off,” Mycroft points out. “You are spending the night?”  
  
Sherlock lifts his gaze to his brother’s perfectly unaffected face. Not a drop of perspiration, not a goosebump of cold. Nothing.  
  
“Of course, you can _play_ inscrutable,” Sherlock muses under his nose. “But then again, isn’t inscrutable always an act?”  
  
“How long since you last ate?”  
  
“Don’t know. What’s today?”  
  
“Thursday, the 20th.”  
  
“Over three days.”  
  
Mycroft looks like he is about to take off to somewhere where there’s food. Sherlock realizes with dull horror that he is enjoying the conversation. Maybe he should eat.  
  
“I needed your help,” he says.  
  
Mycroft has just leaned forward to get up, but now stops. He doesn’t lean back. It gives him an air of menace. It also brings him a few inches closer to Sherlock.  
  
“My help. Was that all?”Mycroft asks.  
  
Something ripples through Sherlock, making him lift his head sharply from the arm rest. He squints at Mycroft.  
  
“Are you upset because I _didn’t_ deceive you with my ‘death’?” He is bemused, and a bit elated with the prospect of such beautiful irony. “I already answered your question. You are inscrutable, dear brother. No one would have known if I’d really lived or died if they had to rely on your face. Lesson learnt at eight, remember?”  
  
“So no risk at all confiding in me in advance, then.”  
  
“None.”  
  
Mycroft nods. Sherlock frowns. The elation is gone, being a weakling to begin with.  
  
“What’s this about?” Sherlock asks.  
  
“This,” Mycroft says softly, and just like that Sherlock is reminded that James Moriarty was not the most dangerous man he’d ever met, “is about trust.”  
  
“Please.” Sherlock puts all his acting talent in the exaggerated enunciation of the word, but his audience has been able to see through his performances since he was two. He stares back at Mycroft, moderately hostile. There’s no doubt that his brother would recognize this look as the camouflage it serves for Sherlock’s anxiousness. But Sherlock is not below playing for sympathy. He is _that_ exhausted.  
  
“I trusted you,” he points out. “I came to you.”  
  
“No, no.” Mycroft’s grin is wolf-like, blinding; safe like home. “Don’t do that. You’re tired and hungry, don’t drag it out.”  
  
“You drag it out.”  
  
“You do, too.”  
  
Sherlock goes up to prop himself on his elbows and peers at Mycroft’s face. Such unchecked childishness…Mycroft is upset.  
  
“I don’t understand,” Sherlock says, an echo of plea in his voice.  
  
Mycroft regards him for a moment. The light from the fire makes his eyes glisten like marbles, one black, one almost translucent from this angle. His mouth has a worryingly sensitive shape about it. Sherlock gets to see Mycroft’s next words come out as he hears them.  
  
“Are you sure you want me to explain?”  
  
Sherlock blinks rapidly, then looks up to meet Mycroft’s eyes. “Now that we’re here,” he says.  
  
“You won’t like it. You’ll deny it, you’ll feel exposed, and then you’ll see fit to punish me by sulking and not eating.”  
  
“Give me some credit.”  
  
Mycroft snorts. Sherlock drops back and burrows himself into his coat again. He has the honesty to be glad that his pout can’t be seen from the coat lapels.  
  
Mycroft tilts his head to one side and Sherlock freezes, inwardly and in his body, confounded by the utter impossibility to read anything on his brother’s excruciatingly familiar form. It makes his throat contract. It makes him feel eight all over again, then ten, then eleven, twelve, thirteen…Or rather seven, six, five, four…  
  
Suddenly something changes. It takes a moment for Sherlock to realize that nothing has really shifted in Mycroft’s expression or in his posture. Even his breathing is the same. The eyes. Whatever they saw on Sherlock’s face, it was as if Mycroft’s eyes took a corner and arrived at an unexpected, memory-crammed _cul de sac_.  
  
“Mycroft?” Sherlock presses. He is startled by how masculine his voice sounds.  
  
Mycroft doesn’t move but that worryingly sensitive shape about his mouth deepens, then translates into his next words.  
  
“It would have shown,” he says. “Everyone would have known. You didn’t need to play safe and involve me in advance—you could have come to me afterwards. I promise that my reaction wouldn’t have…You wouldn’t have doubted.”  
  
“Doubted what?”  
  
“What you always do.”  
  
“I don’t underst—”  
  
“Yes, you do.”  
  
Sherlock wants to tell Mycroft that this is preposterous. And very self-centred. And that obviously Sherlock isn’t the only Holmes who’s got that weakness of always wanting everything to be clever. Because really, as if Sherlock would complicate things so much! Like he would involve Mycroft in advance only to avoid seeing what Mycroft would look like if he thought he had _really_ lost Sherlock.  
  
Or what he wouldn’t look like.  
  
Yes, preposterous. Who would do something like that?  
  
Sherlock isn’t sure how to say all of those things, though. They are all awfully close to playing into the discussion of sentiment, and now Sherlock wonders what came over him to think that there was any comfort to be drawn from such an experience.  
  
“I needed your help,” he says instead. “I needed your brain and your connections, end of story.”  
  
“Do you have any idea how tiresome you are?” It’s like a slap in the face, yet Mycroft’s voice is close to breaking. Sherlock stares at him, wide-eyed. Mycroft just shakes his head and rests his elbows on his thighs, crushing the material of his usually immaculate trousers. Sherlock has already seen so many carelessly left creases all over Mycroft’s clothing that those alone should have been his warning how dire things have become.  
  
“What?” Sherlock manages, aiming for haughty.  
  
“I don’t mean any of your dangerous antics,” Mycroft says like he hasn’t heard him. “Nor your endless posturing, your disregard for the basic rules of social interactions, your reckless treatment of your health, or your criminal attitude towards money. I don’t even mean your vicious approach to anything remotely hinting at the possibility that I may in any way be of some authority.”  
  
“Mycroft, if you are going to—”  
  
“Shut up, Sherlock.” Mycroft’s tone shows true exasperation, and Sherlock would count that as a win if it didn’t chill him to the bone. “I’m talking about having to endure _you_ ,” Mycroft continues, “the only equal I am prepared to have, being the perpetual poster boy of the most deplorable, most frustrating of all manifestations of human blindness: denial.”  
  
Sherlock is gobsmacked by the passion in Mycroft’s words as well as the vaguest sense of threat they convey. To what, he doesn’t know.  
  
“I’m not in denial,” he says automatically. “I choose not to engage my mind with certain things. You should be able to appreciate the difference.”  
  
Mycroft just stares at him, face flushed. Eventually he takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. He stays like that for a few seconds, then drags his hand all the way down his face and chest until it meets the other hand in his lap, palm to palm. He presses the tips of his fingers together and lifts them to his lips. He leans into them, eyes pinning Sherlock to the spot. Sherlock expected Mycroft to argue and push, not this. This unnerves him. He can feel his eyebrows knitting.  
  
“You should eat,” Mycroft says quietly. Next, he’s on his feet, smooth as velvet. “I’ll take care of that, while you take a bath.”  
  
“Will you make my bed, too?”  
  
Sherlock knows that he sounds like a brat, but he can’t help himself. No one, _no one_ leaves him as jangled as Mycroft does. Correction. No one can leave him jangled but Mycroft. Sherlock is helpless against it. He feels defeated despite having the last word in the argument, feels exposed. And _of course_ —he’s starting on a tantrum as means of punishing Mycroft, he’s that close to refusing to eat.  
  
Sherlock hates his brother for a reason.  
  
His brother who is walking away without even responding to his jibe. He is at the door when Sherlock speaks.  
  
“The press recognized John as my partner. Moriarty’s men recognized him as my partner. John can’t put on a good show to save his life, Mycroft. He wears his heart on his sleeve, as the saying goes. Between you and him, don’t tell me you can’t see he was the obvious choice.”  
  
Mycroft seems to consider Sherlock’s words—Sherlock can’t tell, because all he has to observe is a slightly hunched back. Finally Mycroft turns.  
  
“Eggs, I think. You need the protein.”  
  
Then there’s only the soft click of the door closing behind him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Original entry at my Livejournal [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/71864.html).


End file.
